Library Week

As usual, I'm keeping my celebration of Library Week low-key. But in honor of libraries everywhere, I'm sharing some of my favorite library quotes:

"A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life." ~Henry Ward Beecher

"What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists." ~Archibald MacLeish, "The Premise of Meaning," American Scholar, 5 June 1972

"Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest." ~Lady Bird Johnson

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." ~Jorge Luis Borges

"A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone." ~Jo Godwin

"Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off." ~Barbara Kingsolver, "Animal Dreams"

"Librarians are almost always very helpful and often almost absurdly knowledgeable. Their skills are probably very underestimated and largely underemployed." ~Charles Medawar
(OK, I threw that one in for very personal reasons!)

and the one quote that probably resonates more today than the others:

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” ~Whole Earth Catalog

If you want to read about libraries (well, who wouldn't?), I suggest Jo Dereske's Miss Zukas mystery series, The Dewey Decimal System of Love by Josephine Carr, & Quiet, Please by Scott Douglas. They give a good depiction on life inside a library.